Dear Jim Cramer, How About Kinder Morgan? | $KMI

Takeaway:Our Energy analyst Kevin Kaiser has been spot on with Kinder Morgan.

Here's what Jim Cramer had to say back in August 2014.

“It turns out we were stubborn and we were right, and Hedgeye was flippant and disrespectful and wrong. We chose to believe in Rich Kinder, and not in his critics, because we believed him when he always said his companies are "companies run by shareholders for shareholders." It looks like it wasn't worth waiting for the market to prove Hedgeye right -- because, alas, when it comes to Kinder Morgan and today's huge bid, it never, ever will be.” – Jim Cramer, “Cramer: Kinder’s Triumph,” 8/11/14

McCullough: ‘Buy European Equities Now? Absolutely Not’

In this brief excerpt from The Macro Show this morning, Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough responds to two subscriber’s questions about the Euro/US Dollar exchange rate and whether to buy European equities now.

Stock Report: Federated Investors (FII)

Takeaway:We added FII to Investing Ideas on the long side on 11/24.

THE HEDGEYE EDGE

We think that Federated Investors (FII) is set up for upside being that its core business should experience both an increase in profitability and volume. FII is a leader in the management of money market funds, an asset class that has been out of favor for the bulk of this cycle.

However, even marginal rate hikes from the Federal Reserve would greatly improve the profitability of money funds. Secondly, cash products tend to be attractive in the latter part of the economic cycle as investors get defensive and move out of risk assets.

The company is conservatively managed with a solid balance sheet and solid free cash flow dynamics. FII pays a 3% dividend yield which ensures return on the stock as the core money fund business improves both profitability and balances.

INTERMEDIATE TERM (TREND)

The company has been waiving over $300 million in revenue on an annual basis for its clients to maintain a slight net positive yield on the $250 billion it manages in money fund assets. As short yields increase on the margin, the firm will recapture some of these forgone fees. The entire fee waiver opportunity is $0.50 per share in earnings and with current annual baseline earnings at $1.50 per share, this creates potentially growth of over 30%+.

There are few financial companies that are as asset sensitive as FII and, given this earnings trajectory, we think that makes the stock appealing into 2016 and 2017.

LONG TERM (TAIL)

Over the past 7 years, more than $1 trillion has been redeemed in money funds and reallocated to stock and bonds, sourcing the big bull market in risk assets. With the economic cycle eclipsing 72 months, we think it is time to get defensive.

In addition to improved profitability from even marginal rate hikes, this $1 trillion becomes a longer-term opportunity for all money fund markets as investors reallocate and back out of risk assets in the latter stages of this market/economic cycle.

With roughly 9% market share in industry money fund assets, FII will recapture these funds as they come back out of stock and bond markets. We have modeled +$200 billion in positive money flow for the money fund industry in 2016 and +$400 billion for 2017. This assumption reflects some conservatism allowing for some funds to remain outside the money fund channel.

ONE-YEAR TRAILING CHART

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Draghi Disappoints… Is This the Beginning of the “Great Unwind” of Consensus USD Longs?

Takeaway:The intermediate-term outlook for the EUR/USD cross is as murky as its been in over three years.

The EUR/USD rallies, European equities plummet. Expectations were dashed around Draghi “acting” today on QE and interest rates – he loweredthe deposit rate 10bps to -0.30%, kept the main interest rate unchanged at +0.05%, and extended, but importantly did not increase the €60 Billion/month QE program (now until March 2017).

What does today’s market action mean? Investors were holding a massive short position in the EUR/USD going into today’s announcement. [See first CFTC chart below]. The lack of “action” caused a short covering squeeze in the EUR/USD and equities fell as the lack of “drugs” deflated the hope trade that QE raises the tide of all boats.

What’s our policy outlook? There’s an increased likelihood that the ECB has to act by expanding the size of its QE program (to €75-95B/month), likely within the first quarter of 2016, as again the Bank underperforms its growth and inflation expectations while its policy measures impart limited results on on the “real” economy. Today Draghi (with limited detail) expanded the scope of eligible regional and local debt for purchase – we expect even more leniency on what it may purchase in the coming quarters.

Old Song and Dance. Today’s presser showed once again Draghi’s mentality to Extend&Pretend economic gravity. Draghi did not rule out that the ECB was at the lower bound of deposit range, but more importantly, when asked why the ECB chooses to cut the deposit rate, he replied: "We simply observed that cuts improve the transmission of monetary policy". We have yet to see proof of that.

Draghi again went back to his truisms, like “The recovery is becoming broader, and driven by consumption rather than exports. Savings rate is also flat, another positive sign.” Draghi confuses economic conditions and what may prove to be very accommodative financial conditions: we’ll certainly take the other side of his view that economic conditions are all well and good, and showing signs of improvement.

EUR/USD Levels: The EUR/USD broke through our TRADE (3 weeks are less) resistance level today, yet remains comfortably below our TREND (3 weeks or more) resistance levels. One day does not a TRADE or TREND make. We maintain a bearish bias on the EUR/USD, yet much depends on U.S. data (jobs report out tomorrow) and the policy of Janet Yellen’s Fed at its December 15-16 meeting.

Extend asset purchase program to March 2017 (vs September 2016) or beyond if necessary – until sustain adjustment in path of inflation to achieve 2.0% target over medium term

Maintains €60 Billion/month program

Decides to reinvest principal payments of securities purchased under the asset purchase program as they mature for as long as necessary – the goal is to increase liquidity

Decides to include euro-denominated marketable debt instruments issued by regional and local governments in the euro area as assets eligible for regular purchases

Decides to continue conducting the main refinancing operations and 3-month longer-term refinancing operations as fixed rate tender procedures with full allotment for as long as necessary, and at least until the end of the last reserve maintenance period of 2017

-Matthew Hedrick, Associate

Where is the U.S. Dollar Headed From Here?

The EUR/USD cross has rallied nearly 3% today with the preponderance of the move coming on the heels of the ECB’s wet Kleenex of a policy announcement. Simply put, the market is challenging Draghi’s ability to meet lofty expectations for Eurozone monetary easing on a go-forward basis.

Obviously whenever you see a major currency cross gap up 4 big figures in a matter of hours, it’s easy to point to short covering as the primary factor. But with speculative net length in EUR futures and options contracts already having consolidated a fair amount from the perspective of our Z-Score analysis, one could make the case that today’s move is being perpetuated by a fair amount of incremental open interest on the long side. It’s worth noting that the current speculative net length of 45,977 contracts on the DXY is in the 89th percentile of all weekly readings dating back 10 years. The key takeaway here is that there’s a lot of hay to bale to the extent investors need to begin exiting crowded long-USD trades.

What could cause that to happen? The obvious answer is the Federal Reserve openly acknowledging the ongoing and prospective degradation in domestic economic growth that is embedded in our #LateCycle theme.

Said degradation is now painfully obvious for all to see and continues to be corroborated by high-frequency data, at the margins – most recently highlighted today by the sequentially soft November ISM Non-Manufacturing PMI reading. Specifically:

Various measures of household consumption growth (e.g. Real PCE, Retail Sales) are decelerating on both a sequential and trending basis;

Industrial production growth is decelerating on both a sequential and trending basis;

Export growth is decelerating on a trending basis and still contracting from a YoY perspective;

PMI readings are decelerating on both a sequential and trending basis;

Consumer confidence is decelerating on both a sequential and trending basis; and

Producer price inflation (a proxy for corporate revenue growth) is decelerating on both a sequential and trending basis.

Unfortunately for market participants, the FOMC remains completely out to lunch with respect to their [serially overoptimistic] economic projections and, commensurately, their “dot plot” for the Fed Funds Target Rate – both of which are completely at odds with trends across a number of relevant indicators. This disconnect makes formulating a TREND duration view on the direction of the DXY rather difficult, to say the least. Specifically, the data would imply lower-highs, but a high probability of [unwarranted] intervention by the Fed in the form of a rate hike(s) should not be ignored.

On one hand, both history and our dour cyclical outlook for the U.S. economy would support adopting a bearish bias on the U.S. dollar from here.

On the other hand, our dour cyclical outlook for the Eurozone economy and relative distance from achieving its stated policy objectives would support adopting a bearish bias on the EUR from here. The 10Y breakeven rate in the Eurozone is a mere 1.15%, while the Bloomberg consensus estimate for Eurozone CPI in 2016 is only 1.1%; both are well shy of the ECB’s 2% target for “price stability”. This compares to 1.84% and 1.8% for the 5Y-5Y forward breakeven rate in the U.S. and the Bloomberg consensus 2016 U.S. CPI estimate, respectively. Our thought process here is that the further a given central bank is from its stated policy objectives, the higher the propensity is for it to ease at every interval – which is the ECB at the current juncture.

<chart13>

Given the obvious counterbalancing forces, you could make the case that the EUR/USD cross should trade in an increasingly narrow range from here. That said, however, the aforementioned positing and sentiment data would seem to suggest that the path of least resistance is actually higher for the EUR/USD – at least until Draghi corrects today’s policy mistake with a substantially more meaningful expansion of Europe’s QE program.

A lower dollar could prove very bullish in the short term for reflation assets (energy, raw materials, EM stocks, EM FX, EM LC debt, etc.), but that is not a call we are willing to make in the absence of more data. How the Fed interprets tomorrow’s Jobs Report will be very telling on that front indeed…

-Darius Dale, Director

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12/03/15 12:46 PM EST

BREAKING RISK: Fed Fights Economic Reality

Takeaway:Yellen's speech before Congress today was a nice bit of storytelling, but had little to do with the actual U.S. economy.

It's been a gangbuster year for economic storytelling. Unfortunately, most of the tall tales told have failed to come close to anything resembling reality.

We like a good yarn as much as the next person. But Fed Chair Janet Yellen's rate hike perpetuating speech before Congress today obfuscated so many key facts about what is actually happening in the U.S. economy that we thought we should set the record straight.

Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough was particularly fired up discussing the #GrowthSlowing data during today’s preamble to a live Real-Time Alerts broadcast:

“Today we had some [economic] data that further corroborated the Hedgeye view that U.S. growth is slowing. I must say that ex-Housing and Autos, there hasn’t been any November data that hasn’t slowed. This morning’s ISM non-manufacturing data was horrible.

Now, earlier this year, you had all of these people who said ‘If you back out energy the economy looks fine.’ Well, now you have to back out energy, manufacturing and the consumer and then, and only then, is everything fine.

[Mccullough called up this chart. Click to enlarge...]

What you’re looking at here is a Late Cycle Slowdown.

You can see this month’s -2.2% Services number. It must have been the result of climate change or something. I’m going to eventually figure it out, especially, if I back out everything. But that’s the slowest number of the year. And if you didn’t know that the economy is slowing, just look at the retailers this quarter.

We we’re out front on this. And, to be clear, last year we were really bullish on the consumer and, coming out of 2012, we got really bullish in general. But the cycle top for U.S. consumption is corroborated by today’s ISM non-manufacturing readings.

Interestingly, that February top [circled in green above] was also the peak in non-farm payroll growth. So literally, both topped in February. Isn’t that amazing and ironic. Well, not so much. That is the cycle.”

INITIAL JOBLESS CLAIMS | ENERGY STATES CONTINUE TO WEAKEN

Takeaway:Energy state labor conditions continue to deteriorate. Meanwhile, the Fed is poised to tap the brakes on the rest of the country.

The labor environment remains a two-state system for now. There are energy states and non-energy states. Energy states are continuing to decouple from the broader US, while the rest of the country remains reasonably strong. As the chart below shows, the indexed level of claims for energy states has hit a new high relative to the overall US. This is consistent with our call that energy company hedges roll off en masse at YE2015.

Separately, it's important to keep in context where we are in the cycle. We're now 22 months into a sub-330k claims environment. The last three cycles have seen claims stay below 330k for 24, 45 and 31 months (33 months on average) before the economy entered recession. That puts us roughly in-line with the min, 11 months away from the average and ~2yrs away from the max. We think the amount of track remaining is inversely correlated with short rates. With the Fed poised to begin raising rates in a few weeks, we think the amount of track remaining in this economic cycle is getting shorter.

Bear in mind too that the Fed raising rates will serve to increase the pressure on energy state labor conditions by incrementally strengthening the dollar/furthering energy deflation.

The Data

Prior to revision, initial jobless claims rose 9k to 269k from 260k WoW. The prior week's number was not revised. Meanwhile, the 4-week rolling average of seasonally-adjusted claims fell -1.75k WoW to 269.25k.

The 4-week rolling average of NSA claims, another way of evaluating the data, was -9.9% lower YoY, which is a sequential improvement versus the previous week's YoY change of -8.2%

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